Where They Went From There
by Nadie2
Summary: After the music from "One More With Feeling" fades the Scobbies are sucked by the Trio into an alternate world, one in which all their wishes come true. Staying here means certain death, but who would have the courage to leave a place where everything is so effortless and good?
1. Chapter 1

_This story occurs right after "Once more with feeling."_

"Shut up!" Andrew hisses as he trips over Jonathan. The Trio isn't exactly known for their stealth, so a plan that involves stealth was a little ill conceived. There is no way that Buffy would have slept through it if they hadn't left the window open, and the Trio hadn't blown knock out smoke through the window.

They waited until they were sure that the substance had enough time to take effect, Warren picked the lock and let themselves into the house. Everything so far had been according to plan, except for of course the tripping and the bickering.

Warren places the lotus flower soaked in a magical substance over her mouth and nose. Her eyes open, only to roll back in her head.

"I can't believe that worked," Andrew hisses.

I told you it was going to work," Warren says confidently.

"Buffy?" Dawn asks uncertainly, entering her sister's room. She sees the three boys and screams for all that she is worth.

Warren slaps the flower on her mouth, and she hits the ground.

"But we have to get them all tonight. Otherwise, you know they are just going to go around and rescue each other."

"Come on, pick them up and get them in the van," Warren commands.

"I don't understand why we have to take them with us," Jonathan grumbles. The idea of carrying the women down to his van is more physical labor than he would really like to do.

"We can't just leave them here," Warren says with a roll of his eyes, "Even if we take out all of their friends. The police or neighbor or someone is eventually going to look for them. I mean, they are going to be gone forever."

"If it goes according to plan," Andrew amends.

"It will," Warren says, glaring at him.

"It never has before," Jonathan says.

"Grab the girls, and go," Warren grumbles.

They don't so much carry the sisters down the stairs, as drag them, but one way or another they get them into the van.

-0-

"I can't believe it worked," Andrew says, staring at the magically immobilized bodies laying on the floor of their lair. The whole party is there: Buffy, Dawn, Giles, Willow, Xander, Tara, Anya and even Spike for good measure.

Warren glares at him for his lack of faith.

"Do you think they are having good dreams?" Jonathan asks.

"Of course!" Andrew says cheerfully. "That's the whole point. They're having dreams so good that they'll prefer them to reality."

"I wonder what they're dreaming about," Jonathan mutters.

"It doesn't matter, Sunnydale is ours," Warren says with a grin creeping onto his face. This whole super villain thing is easier than he thought it was going to be.

-0-

"Buffy! Are you going to sleep all day?" Her father's voice. No, that's not right, she doesn't live with her father. Wait, of course she does. She lives with her father, the British librarian. Yeah, she's always lived with him, ever since he divorced her mother when she was small.

She loved him.

"Seriously!" The voice on the other side of the door demands, "You've got to get some training in before you go to school."

She dropped out of school after her mother died, how does her father not know that? Wait, her mother never died, and she never dropped out of school. What is with her today?

"I'm up," she says, but she doesn't move.

"You're not fooling anyone," he says.

"Get Dawn up!" Buffy commands.

Who was Dawn? Giles wonders from the hall. Right…His other daughter. The young one. He enters her room, and brushes her hair off her face to wake her as gently as possible.

Dawn opens her eyes. What is Giles doing in her bedroom? Duh. He's her dad. He's woke her up every day of her life.

"Buffy, I got your breakfast, Love," Spike says, coming up the stairs carrying a tray full of breakfast, complete with a single rose.

Giles gives him a glare, which Spike ignores. He's not surprised that Giles is not his biggest fan. What Dad likes his daughter's live in boyfriend?

"Relax, mate. I made breakfast for the rest of you too. I just didn't plan on delivering it to you," Spikes says.

Giles blinks in surprise, and tries to remember why he hates this man. Well, his name is Spike, so that doesn't help, right? Not to mention the fact that he shares a room with Giles' baby girl. "Thank you, William," he says, purposely saying something that will make the other man flinch.

God how I must hate you, Spike thinks in his head. He can't exactly remember why he hates the man. A lot of things are a little bit fuzzy in his head.

Buffy opens the door to her bedroom fully dressed. Spikes kisses her. Buffy shoves him away in almost panic. He's a vampire, and she would never kiss a vampire. Except that's ridiculous, because vampires aren't real. Spike is her boyfriend, her very human boyfriend. And the kiss is sweet, and passionate, and tastes like flowers.

No seriously, did he eat a flower?

"I brought you breakfast in bed. I guess I was a little tardy," he says, smiling at her. He really loves her. She really wishes that she could love him as much as he loves her. Then she could be really happy. What was with her today? Of course she loved him as much as he loved her, maybe even more.

"I'll get back in bed," she offers. "You can join me."

Giles coughs.

Buffy casts him an apologetic look laced with innocence. "Where we will lay fully clothed."

"After breakfast, we need to train," Giles warns. "Dawn! Breakfast!" he calls.

-0-

Anya's eyes open and rest on the ring. Wait, how did that get on her finger? It's not the ring Xander gave her. Of course it is. He gave it to her on their wedding day. It's heavy though. It's weighing her finger down. Downright painful, but then suddenly, its light.

That's weird, but that's how the world works.

She stares at the ceiling of her mansion. She has a mansion? Well, of course she does. It has a vault full of money. She swims in it after lunch.

"Mommy?" the little girl says, peeking her head around the door.

"Come on in, honey," she says.

Then her daughter crawls into bed between her husband and herself. Xander rolls over, and wraps his arm around wife and daughter in one fell swoop.

His daughter is here. He'd always been worried that his kids might turn to be part demon. That was stupid though? Demons are fictional.

Then his daughter was born. She was perfect. Only he can't remember her name. Did he get drunk last night? Who was she?

"Sweetheart?" he says uncertainly.

"Yes Daddy," the girl says curling deeper into his chest.

He's sure he'll remember her name when he wakes up completely. She is his daughter after all.

-0-

The magic is bottomless. Willow always had limits before. No, that's not true. Magic has never had limits. Expect the British man who told her no.

Wait, that's not true. The British man is proud of her. He says she's the best witch ever.

Tara was a witch too. She turns to smile at the woman in bed next to her. Tara was mad at her though. No, she wasn't. Of course she wasn't. Tara had never been mad at her.

Willow used magic to call to her love, and Tara's eyes blink open.

The rush of magic feels better than it ever has before. Willow could get used to this.

Tara stares up at Willow. Too much magic. No, of course it's not. There is no such thing as too much magic. The danger is not enough. If you use just a little bit of magic you might get addicted. A lot is good. She needs to use a lot of magic.

So she uses the magic to wipe the strand of hair that has fallen in Willow's face away.

Willow grins. No scolding. Just lots and lots of power, and someone to share it with.

-0-

Dawn chews on her bacon and fells loneliness creep into her heart. Then Giles is there asking her how she slept. Spike comes into the room ruffling her hair, and calling her 'Little Bit.'

She hates to leave them all to go to school, and learn stupid stuff like algebra. It's not a school day though. Why did she think it was? She's going to spend the morning at the Magic Shop with Giles and Anya. Then in the afternoon, she is going to ride on the motorcycle with Spike. The thought that he can't be out before dark flits through her mind, but she quickly dismisses it as ridiculous.

Buffy? Yeah, she'll be there the whole time. Actually, Buffy is around so much that she's kind of sick of her big sister. She could do with a little more alone time. For sure.

Spike slips her a slice of his bacon, and she flashes him a grin.

Yeah, her family is pretty perfect.


	2. Chapter 2

"They're not moving," Andrew observes.

"They're asleep," Jonathan says dismissively.

"People still move when they are asleep," Andrew points out.

"It's a deep sleep then."

"Their open eyes with the whites is kind of freaky."

"Then just don't look at them."

-0-

"Dad? What are we training for?" Buffy asks.

He ponders. That question shouldn't be as hard as it is. "Self-defense is always a good skill for a girl to have."

Buffy can't help but wonder if her dad isn't preparing her to fight off Spike. Not that that was ever going to happen. "I think I have enough self-defensives," she says, kicking and spinning in the air and doing an impressive back handspring.

"Quite," Giles says, taking off his glasses to give them a good cleaning.

"Besides, I don't want to fight. I'm very tired of fighting." Which was, of course, ridiculous, because she'd never fought in her entire life.

He smiles at her. "Okay, you don't have to fight. If you ever run into problems, I'll be there to take care of you."

"Or Spike," she says.

"Yes, William and I will look after you," he says with reluctance.

-0-

Willow's finger draws the information out of the computer screen. There is no need to read or even think. The information goes straight from the computer into her brain. Learning has never been this effortless before.

Well of course it had been. It had always been like this. How else could it be? How else would you learn anything?

Tara is in the kitchen frying eggs with magic. Halfway through she decides she doesn't want eggs, and makes a cake instead.

She's going to have a cake for breakfast. There is some reason you shouldn't do that. It's bad, naughty, shameful.

Who cares? She's going to eat cake for breakfast, and no can stop her.

Probably because she and Willow are the only people left on the planet. Left? No, they were the only people who had ever been on the planet, and that was the way it was supposed to be. The way it had always been.

Complete. Perfect.

-0-

"You've got to love us having the house to ourselves once in a while," Spike says drawing Gothic letters on her bare back.

She's pretty sure it's a love poem. He writes those for her. A lot. He's embarrassed by it. He tries to hide it from her. People have made fun of him for the poems before. She would never though, she loves him.

"I love you," she tells him.

He smiles with that abused puppy face that always makes her heart melt.

He kisses her neck, and it scares her, for one second. Why would that be scary?

Then one of Spike's kittens jumps up on the bed purring. He inserts himself between Buffy and Spike.

"How many of those things do you have now?" Buffy asks.

"I lost count at a score," he replies.

He uses really old language sometimes, like he's lived for a hundred years or something. It must be because he is British.

"Maybe we should slow the rate of kitten rescue down," she suggests.

"Come on, you love the fluffy little buggers," Spike protests.

"You know? I really don't," she says, slowly nudging the kitten out of the way so that she has more access to her boyfriend. For cuddles and what not.

-0-

The Magic Box is empty. It's always empty. There is no one else in the world. Still, Anya likes to sit at the cash register and play with the money. Not that she doesn't have more money at home. It's just fun both ways.

Giles is at the table with Dawn reading demon books.

He is filtering them for her, keeping the traumatizing one out. Actually, none of them are traumatizing, and they are not about demons. They are fairy tales. Full of unicorns and rainbows.

She doesn't have to be annoyed though, because there is nothing in the world but unicorns and rainbows. He's not protecting her or babying her.

He doesn't have to worry about her either. His little girls are safe. The battle is won.

Well, there was never a battle. He's just been reading too many fairy stories.

-0-

Xander is taking care of his daughter today. He's not sure that he's qualified to do this. Especially because he still doesn't know what the girl's name is. He must have done this before though. Like a lot of times. She's his daughter, and he always takes care of her when Anya goes to the store, doesn't he? She's like…how old?

"Let's play a game," he suggests.

She bounces.

"How old are you?"

"Four."

"What is your name?" he asks, grinning at the success.

"This is a really boring game, Daddy," the little girl says, running off.

Yep, his wife is going to kill him when she finds out that he doesn't even know his own daughter's name.

-0-

"Spike is here!" Dawn says running out to the motorcycle.

Giles goes out to see them off. "Helmet," he reminds.

"Don't worry, mate, I wouldn't let anything bad happen to the Little Bit," Spike says, handing the helmet over to her.

"Spike, can we get ice cream?" she asks.

"Yes," he says, revving the engine.

Giles glances at his older daughter and her brightly colored skin tight skirt. "Did you really ride the motorcycle in a skirt?" he asks with obvious disapproval oozing from his voice.

"I was very ladylike," she defends.

Sometimes he wishes that his daughter would just grow up a little. He worries about her all the time. She would never be able to take care of herself if he wasn't around. A parent's job is to make sure that their kids are ready for the world, and he's failed at that.

Well of course he hasn't. Look at her in her little pant suit getting into a car to go to work. "I'll see you later Dad," she says.

Now all he has to do is teach her how to do her own laundry.

-0-

Tara kisses Willow and it tastes familiar. Not in a good way where her girlfriend tastes like all the kisses she's had with her girlfriend before. It's a taste that makes her remember that she forgot something.

Not that that makes sense.

What is that flavor? Maybe she's just using a new kind of lip balm. It tastes like…flowers? Yeah, it tastes like flowers. What kind of flowers, though? I'm pretty sure that it's important. That if she could remember what kind of flower Willow tasted like she would be able to fix what was wrong.

Well, that was a silly thought. Nothing was wrong. She was kissing Willow. Everything was perfect.

-0-

Anya's daughter rushes into her arms. "Mommy! I missed you!" the little girl shouts in excitement and joy.

"Did your father not provide you with amusement?" she asks, glaring at her husband over the child's head.

"Daddy plays boring games."

"Well, now Mommy is here to save the day," Anya says. "What game do you want to play?"

"Hide-and-go-seek," the kid replies, running off.

"Okay, Mommy and Daddy will find you!" Xander says, looking after her. He's going to find out her name though. He really is.


	3. Chapter 3

"What is that smell?" Jonathan asks, horrified.

"I think one of them wet themselves," Warren offers.

"Did we know that was going to happen?" Andrew asks.

"I guess we should have figured. I mean, they've been asleep for hours. When is the last time you went that long without peeing?" Warren challenges.

"Well, what are we going to do about it? I mean, we're just not going to let them pee on the floor forever are we?" Jonathan asks.

"We're going to have to get some adult diapers," Jonathan says.

"Who is going to change them?" Warren asks.

"Rock, paper, scissors?" Andrew suggests.

-0-

"I'm going to bed," Dawn says with an faked yawn. She's not really tired. But she is pretty sick of being around people. Who would have ever thought that would happen? Of course, that's the way it always was. She was going to slip off and write in her diary for a while.

"Me too," Buffy says.

"I'm going to have a cup of tea, would you like one?" Spike asks.

Giles really doesn't want to spend time alone with this man, but he does really want a cup of tea. He should also get to know the man better. After all, his daughter had chosen him.

"Certainly."

Spike puts the kettle on the stove, and Giles cleans his glasses.

"I love your daughter, sir," Spike says.

Sir, that was an odd thing to say. Spike had never called him sir before, had he? "Quite," Giles responds.

"I want to marry her," Spikes says.

Giles cleans his glasses again.

"I'm asking your permission to ask her."

Giles nods.

"Great!" Spikes says, bounding up the stairs.

"No, I was merely acknowledging the fact that I understood your intentions. I was not giving my permission."

The electric kettle whistles. But right now, he's a lot more in the mood for whiskey than tea.

-0-

Buffy is in bed, but not asleep, when he gets up to her room. Her eyes fall on him in the darkness, and they are full of love.

He needs a ring, though. He can't ask her to marry him without a ring.

"I love you," he says.

"Too tired," she mumbles.

"Okay, we'll talk about our love later," he says. Not the time.

-0-

Anya is reading a bedtime story to their kids.

Wait, didn't they only have one kid this morning? No, of course now, that was silly. It had always been the two. The four year old girl, and her six year old brother. Yep, that's the way it had always been.

"And then, the Poinwa demon disemboweled them all…" Anya says.

"I think we've had quite enough of story time for today," Xander says, reaching over his wife to grab the book from her.

"I was not done with the story yet!" she protests.

"I think that story is going to give the kid nightmares," Xander says.

"I don't have nightmares, I am way too tough for that," his son proclaims. Yeah, he doesn't know the boy's name either. He's pretty much failing at the whole fatherhood thing.

"Daddy, can you read us a story then?" his little girl asks.

"Yes, love," he says, going over to the bookshelf in the hope that there is something there he is not going to find objectionable.

Disney princesses. Objection. Talking trucks. Objection. Barbie. Actually, the demon book looks pretty good about now. Ah yes, Shel Silverstein. He can live with that.

-0-

Tara and Willow are sitting on the floor of their living room, facing each other, cross legged, with their hands touching. The magic is flowing through them powerfully, almost painfully powerfully. Willow can feel the power from the ruts of the Earth growing into her veins. Flowing through her, through the woman she loves again and again. It's a feedback loop, and the power gets greater every second.

She thinks about all the things that she can do with the power. Well, she can't actually think of much that she could do with the power, now that she really considers it. What is power for anyway? It's for changing things, but what do you want to change? Everything is perfect.

This power is…a waste.

Willow pulls away from Tara's hands. Tara's eyes open, and she smiles at her. "I want a kitten," Tara declares.

Yes, that's what the magic is for. Making wishes come true, and making the woman you love happy.

A little Latin, and a flick of the wrist, and there is a cat squirming onto Tara's lap.

-0-

"You seam really distracted," Dawn says as Spike pauses in the middle of story. He knows stories that have all kinds of nasty violent bits, the kind of stories that everyone else has forgotten a long time ago. If they ever knew them.

"What would you think if I married your sister, Little bit?" Spike asks.

She grins. "Can I be in the wedding?"

"I don't know, we haven't really discussed it," he says. There is a faint memory for him, as if he _had_ talked about this before. Then there is the unsettling feeling that he doesn't have enough memories. He lived a whole life didn't he? Even more than one? Why doesn't he remember much?

He remembers love, and that's probably all that really matters.

"I want to be a bridesmaid," Dawn declares. "But not in one of those ugly bridesmaid dresses."

"I'm pretty sure I'm not going to have anything to do with the selection of bridesmaid dresses," Spike says.

"What color do you think she is going to have as her theme color?" Dawn gushes.

"I haven't asked her yet, and you can't say anything until I do."

Dawn pouts, "You're going to ask her soon, though right? Really soon? Like now?"

He'll have to, because there is no way Dawn is going to be able to keep this under her hat for long.

-0-

They are fighting monsters. Buffy wasn't aware that there was such a thing as monsters, but clearly there is. She doesn't like the idea of fighting. She hates it, really. She thought she was never going to have to fight again. (She'd fought before? That can't be right). But he likes to fight, and she loves him so much that she would do anything for him. So she's fighting monsters.

His eyes never leave her the whole time they spin, and kick, and jump, and punch. It's like foreplay, only better.

Then the last monster turns to dust, and he pulls her in for a long kiss. When he finally pulls away he says, "Will you marry me?"

She wonders why he hasn't asked her long before, and she says, "Of course."

She is shocked the next second when she is dressed all in lace in the middle of an ancient catacomb with family all around saying vows. Then again, she isn't really shocked. This is always how weddings happened wasn't it? You decided to get married, and the next second you just were.

There is a second before the "I do," where she suddenly worries that she doesn't. Then she looks at his face, that abused puppy dog face, and she is sure that she does.

She loves him. Of course she does.


	4. Chapter 4

"Do they have to eat?" Jonathan asks, staring at the prisoners on the floor of the lair. "I mean, they've been going to the bathroom. You would think at some point they would have to eat or drink, but they can't, because they are asleep."

"Maybe we should get them hooked up to an IV or something," Andrew offers.

"Don't be stupid, they're fine," Warren says with a note of warning in his voice.

"If we don't find a way to feed them, they are going to die," Andrew says with concern.

"Well, then they'll be out of our way, won't they? That was the point of this whole thing, to get them out of our way," Warren replies.

"Yeah, by making them all happy in a fantasy world, not by killing them," Jonathan says, staring at the bodies on the floor, and worrying about the time when they might be no more than bodies.

"Look, we've got days before it's that dire. We'll think of something by then," Andrew says.

-0-

The feast is never going to end. It's not going to fill them up either. Why are they so hungry? So desperate for food? Why does everything taste like flowers? Why can't they get full? Why does the turkey appear back on the table every time they eat it? Nothing here is right.

-0-

Without the Trio noticing, the Lotus leaves begin to crack and peal. Little bits of fresh air get in through the creases. The Scoobies breathe deep.

-0-

Willow doesn't want to be a few feet away from Tara anymore. So she transports the woman in front of her.

It's a violation. Tara doesn't like being moved around like she is a thing. She's a person, and she wanted to be on the other side of the room, thank you very much.

Besides, if you use magic too much you become addicted. It's dangerous to use magic as often as Willow does.

Why did she think it was the other way around?

"Can you just ask me to come over next time?" Tara says.

Willow smiles at her, and is about to answer with a magic cloud in the air, because that's so much more fun, and easier than talking.

The magic is gone. It's used up. She's exhausted, because she used way too much magic. She barely has the effort to breathe. She takes deep breaths, really deep breaths.

-0-

Giles looks at Buffy in her wedding dress kissing…the vampire. The vampire that she hates.

"I object!" he protests.

"We're actually a bit past the objection part, mate," the vampire replies.

"He's evil!" Xander says, pointing at Spike, suddenly realizing what the British man is bent out of shape about.

Buffy starts to defend him, but as she pulls away from the kiss, his fang draws a single drop of blood from her lotus flower mouth.

It's not the fact that he's a vampire that bothers her. She's okay with that. She just doesn't love this particular vampire, as much as she wants to.

He is always there for her. She can trust that. He fights beside her.

Which is good, because the battle is not over. The battle will never be over. She's going to spend her entire life fighting things that go bump in the night. Sometimes they kill her, and one day the things that go bump in the night will kill her in a way where she will never be able to come back from it.

She will fight forever. She has to, because if she ever refuses the battle, someone will die, and it will probably be someone she loves.

Dawn falls to the floor, because she has just remembered that her mother has died. The sight of her mother's body is before her eyes. No one ever notice Dawn.

They've spent time with her in a fake world, but that was only because no one had jobs or school or the battle against the Big Bad. Now things will go back to normal, and she will go back to being the invisible little sister of a superhero.

She's sobbing over her mom's death, but no one can hear her. They are all still locked on the newly married couple, now arm's length away.

She can see why, the grief etched on the face of Spike is something that will remain with her until the day that she dies.

He's been in love for all his life, and all the time since his death. But he's never been loved back, not really. Here he is, once again with the world crashing around him. He was so happy, just a second ago. Now he's got the abused puppy look firmly back in place.

"Xander!" Anya screams as her children disappear.

He wants to scream their names. Maybe that would call them back from whatever mist they've disappeared to, but he never knew their names.

They were never real, but right now that doesn't make their disappearance hurt any less. He holds his wife close to his heart to comfort her.

Then he remembers that she isn't his wife yet. He remembers that she's a demon.

Anya realizes that she's never going to get to roll in her money pile again, and she wishes she'd spent more of the dream doing that.

Dawn continues to cry in unnoticed agony.

"I'm sorry," Spike says.

Giles realizes that Buffy is not grown up, that she still relies on him for everything. She never bothered to prepare for adulthood, because she never thought that she would live long enough to see it.

Really she didn't live long enough to see adulthood. She has just developed a little habit of coming back every time she dies.

The witches arrive. Even the wedding hadn't pulled them into the same reality as the rest of them. The cracks in the dream were enough to do it though.

Spike remembers that he's dead.

Dawn remembers that her sister was brought back to life. Willow was brave enough to do it for her sister. Dawn herself had not been brave enough to do it for her mother.

Buffy remembers how amazing heaven was.

Everyone smells flowers, and feels their empty stomachs.

"What's happening?" Willow asks, confused. She knows that this reality is cracking and another is coming through, but she doesn't know which reality is real quite yet.

"Lotus," Tara says, finally identifying the scent that she's been trying to identify ever since she got here. She feels as if the fog is lifting from her mind, and she is finally being allowed to think.

"Impossible, that species went extinct a long time ago," Giles says.

"I know a dealer, we could get some for the Magic Box," Anya offers.

Spike lifts his hand, and makes the motion of ripping something off his face, and just like that he disappears.

Dawn imitates the motion next. She's still crumbled on the floor, and still no one has noticed that she's there. She disappears, and appears in the other world.

The Trio is out the door, and Spike is chasing him in an adult diaper. She laughs until she realizes that she is wearing one too.

Giles is the next one to come out of the dream. He looks at the scene around himself, and just sits silently when he realizes there is no immediate threat.

Tara awakens next, and secures herself a blanket to wrap around her bottom half. When Willow wakes next to her a second later she shares. They're both wrapped in a giant blanket skirt, and it would be sweet if it wasn't so awkward now that Tara is leaving, and the heavy memory of manipulation hangs between them.

Spike returns muttering, "They got away," and then finding his pants. The rest of the new arrivals search for their own pants.

Xander and Anya sit up together, having pulled the flower off each other's mouth in the same moment in the dream.

"What were our kid's' names?" Xander finally asks knowing that itjust a dream, and the fact that he doesn't know it doesn't mean he's a bad father.

"You name them that young?" Anya responds.

"Great, our kids never had names," Xander said.

"It's all right, dear," she says patting his arm, "They were only imaginary children. When we have the real ones we'll name them sooner. By what? Age two?"

"Birth, we'll name them when they are born," Xander corrects.

"Is anyone going to wake the slayer?" Spike asks.

No one moves, but they just stare at Buffy on the floor.

Spike groans, and he kneels down next to the Slayer, slowly pulling the flower off her mouth. She doesn't open her eyes.

"Maybe the person in the dream has to do it themselves," Anya suggests.

"Pet?" Spike says softly.

"She's not your pet," Giles says firmly.

Spike doesn't back off. "Come on, love, wakey wakey or the nasty vampire is going to have to give sleeping beauty a kiss."

Xander takes a step forward to make sure the nasty vampire doesn't follow through on his threat.

Buffy's eyes are open now. Once again, she's been pulled away from peace and joy back into this world.

The battle will never end, and she's not even sure her heart is capable of love anymore.

But here she is, alive, once more.

And she's pretty sure it's all Spike's fault.


	5. Chapter 5

"Buffy, are you okay?" Dawn asks.

"Peachy," Buffy says, staring at her tea. She used to make fun of Giles for drinking this stuff. Somewhere along he'd started handing her a cup. A few months after that she actually started to drink the horrid stuff.

She was pretty sure she didn't like it before the "dream". She wonders if there is anything else left over from the dream.

"Are you going to patrol?" Dawn asks.

Buffy shakes her head.

"Do you want to go the Bronze?"

"No, go ahead," Buffy responds.

Dawn shoots her a look of despair, which she misses, as she misses everything.

-0-

Willow's magic is completely drained. She really didn't think that she used that much. She sort of lost all perspective when she was in the dream world. Magic was eternal and effortless there, and she's not doing well back in this world where the magic can run out.

Everything is slow, and painful.

She has to decide what is the most important use of magic for the day.

It wouldn't be so bad if Tara was staying, but magic could help her deal with this new excruciating pain.

-0-

Tara can see how hard this is for Willow. She wishes she could stay. She has to leave though. Willow is going to destroy herself with magic, and the only hope Tara has of saving her is to leave. Maybe Willow will love her enough to give up magic.

Of course experiencing pain isn't going to make thing easier for an addict.

Tara is pretty sure that she can't do anything to save Willow. So she's not going to sit around and watch the women she loves fall apart.

-0-

"Buffy, did you pay the bills?" Giles asks, looking at the alarming stack of them on the desk.

"I don't know. I'll ask Anya to come over and do it. She loves money," Buffy says dismissively.

Dawn comes down the stairs with her backpack.

"Aren't you already at school?" Giles asks in surprise.

"I got a bit of a late start," she says.

"Do you need a ride?" he asks.

"Xander is going to pick me up," she says.

"Why don't you go get some breakfast?" Giles suggests.

"I'm good," Dawn says, zipping out the door.

Buffy has said nothing at all, and Giles stares at her. He finds himself longing for some version of her that was never real, the one in the pants suit going off to a real job.

It's his fault, he knows. If he was going to play the role of her father all of these years he should have done it right. He should have prepared her for the world.

But every time she asks for help he comes running. That's the way it's always been, and that's the way that it will always be.

Until of course he leaves. That's why he has to go. He loves her too much to do right by her, to let her struggle, and fall, and fail.

She has to, but he doesn't have to watch. He's been her Watcher long enough.

-0-

The house is empty when Dawn comes home. She tells herself to do her homework, because no one else is going to tell her. Then she makes her own dinner, and eats it in front of the television. This is the way it is now. This is the way it has been since her mother died.

Maybe at some point the loneliness will stop hurting, and she'll be able to accept this new normal as her truth.

-0-

It was easier in the dream. Xander just had to think it and it was. There was no guessing, no wondering, no worrying. There was no chance that when they had babies they would turn out to be demons. No chance that Anya would start to hate him if he came every time that Buffy called. No chance that Anya would ever hurt him.

No chance that he would ever hurt her.

It was a safe thing, that dream, and very different from the way that things worked in the real world.

-0-

Anya missed the money.

And the kids.

But mostly the money.

-0-

Spike was avoiding Buffy. She should have been grateful. She knew that he was doing it because he loved her so much. He was being sensitive to her feelings. That was the whole problem, wasn't it? He felt so much for her, and she felt so little for him. It sucked just as much to be on this side of the unrequited love as it did to be on the other side of it.

She sits on the porch stairs hoping he'll show up. He always does when she's in pain.

It probably wouldn't be a good idea to be together. After all there was that kiss that they'd shared, and she really doesn't want a repeat of that.

It's Giles who sits down next to her with all of his compassionate British silence. Three minutes in, he cleans his glasses.

"It's a little cruel that I get pulled out of heaven twice in one year," she whispers toward the yard.

"You marrying Spike is heaven?" Giles asks.

"Not having to fight was heaven," she says.

He chose this. It was the family business, sure. He'd rebelled for a while thinking that he was going to chose another path. But when he'd decided to be a watcher it had been his decision. Buffy never really had a choice, or she had one but both of them were crappy decisions. You can either be the Slayer so much that you lose any hint of yourself, or you can be yourself and let the world burn.

"The Spike thing…It was nice not to have to hurt him. It's hard for someone to love you, and not be able to love him back. Especially if he is a good person."

"Spike?" Giles asks.

Buffy nods, and can't help but wish that Spike was the one offering her comfort. When had he become the keeper of her secrets, and the stabilizer of her emotional states?

"It was a cheap trick to keep us out of the fight. They probably thought that the spell was going to last forever. They probably wanted to kill us," Giles says.

"Would that have been so bad?"

"Well, considering the fact that we would have died," Giles says with a bit of false mirth in his voice.

Buffy still isn't sure that that would have been a bad thing. She used to be like them, right? Enjoying life, longing for it.

Now, going out like that, in a dream where she was happy, sounded pretty good. Especially if it lead back to that place that she was before. It might have been her ticket back to heaven. It wouldn't have been her fault. No one could blame her. Others would take up the fight, and it wouldn't be her job anymore, without all of the guilt.

Giles looks at her, concerned. He knows she's in a bad place, and she has every right to be. She kills things by the thousands. Even though they are soulless, they are intelligent and they speak before they die. That's a weight. Then the ones she can't save, the dead innocents. It was an even bigger weight.

Then there were the occasional deaths.

It was a miracle the girl could function. How could he leave her like this? Couldn't he just stay, for a while?

No, because the disasters were never far apart in Buffy's life. She barely had enough time to escape one disaster before the next one arrived. If he waited until she was emotionally stable he would be waiting forever. He has to let her fly.

Giles puts an arm around her and holds her for a while before she gets up and heads into the house.

There is a shuffle in the trees. Spike was there the whole time. He has on that abused puppy face that made her wish she loved him in the dream. She wishes that she loved him right now, but she is now in a world where wishes are not enough to make truth happen.

Still she is walking toward him though, compelled by some strange mixture of compassion and self hatred.

"I'm sorry," he says. He doesn't have to list all of the things that he is sorry for. She can guess them. He is sorry that he loves her, and that in the dream that was enough to make her feel like she loved him. He is sorry that he didn't realize what was happening and stop it before the dream was able to hurt her again.

He's even sorry that he pulled that leaf from her mouth instead of leaving her alone to die like she wanted. Only, not really. Letting her die is the only thing that he will not do for her.

He'd never leave her. When her back is to the wall she knows that he will always be fighting by her side. That's comfortable, especially now when the other man she's always relied on is leaving her to go half way across the world.

To live in a town called Bath none the less.

"It's okay," she tells him.

"It's not though," he says, lighting a cigarette.

"No, but it's also not your fault," she says. She is careful not to make eye contact with him right now, because she is pretty sure that his compassion will crush her.

He smokes his cigarette slowly, and then smashes it into the ground, "Do you want to go kill some little nasty things by the cemetery?"

It worries her that killing is a coping mechanism. She is just beginning to learn that she is a monster.

She looks at Spike. Not all monsters are bad.


End file.
